Puget Sound Liberals

Many of us learned about 'Framing' by reading George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant. Framing is essentially giving an old word or phrase a new meaning or substituting a word or phrase for an old one to describe something with a new meaning. Framing seeks to label something with words which have favorable or unfavorable connotations. Thus a thing that is favorable becomes thought of as unfavorable or the reverse.

George Lakoff's recently published Whose Freedom? The Battle over America's Most Important Idea demonstrates that Conservatives use the word freedom different than liberals do.

I find Geoffrey Nunberg's Talking Right to be more readable than George Lakoff's books and more to the point, in giving many examples of Conservatives' framing and the reframing that liberals must do. The Earth Works Action book, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right offers liberal tactics (compatible with the liberal strategies presented in the books which were reviewed in the last 2 newsletters), including more comments on reframing.

The following discussion of Liberal Reframing of Conservatively framed concepts is stimulated by the above books. I will focus upon reframing the word liberal, which both Geoffrey Nunberg and I believe to be crucial, although many others have given up and turned to the word 'progressive'. I will then suggest how we can reframe many other misleading conservative phrases.

We are all aware of many misleading conservative phrases: Silent Majority, the L-word, Liberal Elite, Class Warfare, Liberal Media Bias, Sound Science, Compassionate Conservatism, Family Values, Culture of Life, Partial Birth Abortion, No Child Left Behind, Marriage Penalty, Ownership Society, Personal (not Private) Accounts, Clear Skies, Clean Water, Healthy Forests, It's Your Money, You can spend your money better than the government can, Government, Death Tax, Department of Defense, War on Terrorism, Patriotism, and others. In most cases, I find it easy to refute the conservative framing.

First let's deal with major words which label us: Liberal and Progressive. Liberals have largely failed to challenge the conservative Demonizing of Our Liberal Name. Yet 'Liberal' has a clear definition, a proud history and is essentially identical to the traditional mainstream American Dream. No wonder the conservatives have exerted themselves to distort its meaning. What is surprising our Liberals failure to defend our term and attack its attackers, especially since it is so easy to defend and easy to attack the conservatives' distorted reduction of and attacks on our American Dream.

Our Liberal Values
We are very clear about the meaning of the word, 'Liberal'. People who believe in the following values are Liberal.

• All members of our American community should have the same freedoms and opportunities.
• We each have the responsibility to protect the freedoms and opportunities of all other Americans.
• We and our government should be competent and compassionate, helping those who have fewer freedoms and opportunities than the rest of us.
• Our United States should be a cooperative member of our world's community of nations.

Our Liberal Struggles
These values can be traced back over three centuries, to John Lock's Treatise on Government, published in 1690, which argued for giving the English parliament the authority to limit the power of the English monarch. These values motivated our many victorious struggles to free our colonists from British slavery, extend our suffrage to men without property, abolish slavery, provide labor and consumer protections, break up powerful corporate trusts, give women the right to own property and vote, regulate banks and stock exchanges, provide a safety net (including unemployment insurance and social security, assist our poor to escape their poverty, stop legal discrimination against blacks, provide environmental protection. We are winning the struggle to grant equal rights to gays and lesbians and will win the struggle to provide legal protection to emigrants.

Opposition from Conservatives
In all these struggles, we overcame opposition from conservatives, who always believe that some group should have fewer freedoms and opportunities than the rest of us. While we have worked to enhance freedoms and opportunities to all of us, conservatives have primarily worked to protect and enhance the extra freedoms and opportunities of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, including corporations which they want to treat as people.

Using Social Darwinist theory, conservatives argue that the wealthy and powerful have earned their extra freedoms and opportunities. Using Trickle Down theory, they argue that everyone will benefit most by leaving the wealthy their wealth which they will then use to create jobs. Both theories are wrong, without supporting facts and many contrary facts. Both argue for an inequality that goes against our American Dream.

Our American Dream
Shared by virtually all Americans, our American Dream has two parts:

1. We should work together to defend and enhance our freedoms and opportunities for all of us.
2. We should be competent in using our freedoms and opportunities.

We can see our American Dream in a survey I once did of 3rd - 5th grade readers from the 1830's to the 1880's. The earlier readers particularly used selections which presented the message that wealthier people should be more compassionate, while poorer people should be more disciplined (competent).

Our Liberal Values and American Dream are essentially identical. Conservatives also profess to believe in the American Dream, but they less likely to emphasize collective effort to enhance our freedoms and opportunities. They are more likely to emphasize individual effort to utilize freedoms and opportunities, which of course works to the advantage of those with the most wealth and power. Conservatives also believe that some people don't deserve to have the same freedoms and opportunities as the rest of us. In fact, their efforts are always oriented to increasing the differences between haves and the have-nots.

Liberals Give Up on Offense
Liberal Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were proud liberals and happy warriors who enjoyed politics and happily gave hell to their opponents. But after Reagon started referring to the L-word, Democratic leaders retreated into a defensive mode, attacking Republicans less for their violations of the American Dream.

Conservatives could thus give their full well-organized attention to maligning both liberals and government. Liberals began losing elections. Conservatives gained power not only by replacing Southern Democrats with Republicans, but also by replacing moderate with extreme conservatives. They also rationalized their organization of power.

Conservatives redefined both freedom and government. Conservatives benefited from defining corporations as people such that government regulations were seen to violate corporate freedoms rather than to protect worker and consumer freedoms. Government became the enemy of rather than the guarantor of freedom and opportunity. Liberals, who championed government protections, were viewed as tyrannically violating corporate freedoms rather than defending people's freedoms.

Progressives Falsely Define Conservatives
Instead of defending the long and successful record of the liberals' many victorious struggles to enhance the American Dream, many liberals have retreated to describing themselves as 'Progressives'. They define Conservatives as seeking to conserve or go back to the past, while Progressive orient to progress oriented to the future. But this is inaccurate. Conservatives have never simply wanted to return to the past. Their primary goal has been to enhance the freedoms and opportunities enjoyed by the wealthy and powerful. To do so, they have been quite willing to make changes oriented to the future they desire.

Present conservative Republicans are now the party of big ideas, which include many major departures from past practices, even ones that they formerly endorsed. Conservatives have abandoned their former isolationism for an aggressive foreign policy and have abandoned our many alliances for unilateral action. They are abandoning our separation of church and state which goes back to our founding, to argue for government support for their Conservative Christianity. They are not just insisting that social services be cut to balance the budget; they are cutting taxes to imbalance the budget and force social services cuts. They are trying to privatize all government assistance and many other programs. Republicans have changed so much that many traditional conservatives and libertarians are now disgruntled.

Progressives Haven't Defined Themselves
Progress, like Reform, doesn't mean anything without further definition. Progress toward what? Toward meeting what challenge? One group (I don't remember which) recently spoke of using focus groups to define Progressive. This would ignore any historical element. Are we to give up our claims to have led the many victorious struggles to enhance the American Dream?

Another group held a contest to obtain answers to, 'What is a Progressive?' Some winning answers follow, which don't express anything which doesn't apply to Liberals as defined above. And they express much about compassion, but less about competence. If progressives become a threat, our Conservatives will surely attack them as bleeding-heart progressives.

Carol S., Amherst, MA - (Our Winner):

A progressive is someone who understands that it is the people of our country who make it great, and unless we take care of the people first, we'll never be successful in maintaining our greatness. Taking care of the people means providing healthcare for everyone. It means keeping the environment clean, safe and preserved. It means great schools and great jobs. It means improving the lives of families, rather than lining the pockets of big business, or big politicians. It means taking care of each other here, and around the world. We're all in this together.

Louis L., Sunnyvale, CA - (Runner Up):

A Progressive believes that a better life is possible for everyone. They know that when we make room at the table for everyone, we are all enriched. Progressives actively pursue new, more effective solutions to the problems we face as a people. Status quo is not a given; it is a challenge to do better.

Julie P., Hastings, NY - (Runner Up):

A progressive is someone who believes in the common good-in a fair shake for every person - and is willing to fight for it.

Cassandra B., Garden City, MI:

A progressive is someone who, instead of reaching backward for a nonexistent, idyllic past, works tirelessly toward bettering the future. A progressive recognizes that we are a product of our historical moment and that in order to escape the fate of repeating the same mistakes of the past we must continually reach forward, expand our ideas and break down the barriers that keep us apart.

Lawrence F., San Francisco, CA:

A progressive is someone who cares about the other guy. It's as simple as that!!

Robert G., Philadelphia, PA:

A progressive identifies with the underdog, fights for the disadvataged, speaks for those without a voice and is on the side of working class and poor people in the struggle for equality and opportunity for everyone.

Jean M., Richmond, CA:

A progressive is someone who cares about others as much as themselves. They are interested in making all of society a better place. They are not afraid to do the right thing because it benefits society as a whole, rather than doing something for selfish reasons. They realize that we are indeed our brother's keeper.

Craig S., Fort Collins, CO:

A progressive is a person who thinks the best is yet to come. Rather than yearning for 'the good old days' a progressive realizes that the best days are still ahead if we are willing to give up old ways that lead to failure and to take up new ways that lead to mutual success.

William W., Canada, MI:

A progressive is someone who understands that personal wellbeing cannot be separated from the wellbeing of society, and that we are all better and stronger when we work together for the common good. From the air and water that we all depend on, to the education of our neighbors' children, a progressive understands that none is immune from the effects of community underachievement. Today's progressive understands that the individual is most effective when all in society function highly.

Virginia W., Sausalito, CA:

When the water rises, the storm is raging and the winds are howling, the conservatives say "Quick, throw some people out of the boat or we will sink." A progressive says, "Hold on... let's build a bigger boat!"

Conservatives attack us with such epitaphs as extremist, elitist, representing special interests, socialistic, and weak in defending our nation from violence. We should not respond defensively as whinny victims. We should respond aggressively as proud mainstream liberals.

We liberals are mainstream. We represent the best of our American traditions expressed by our declaration of independence; constitution; and victorious struggles to abolish slavery, protect farmers and other workers from railroad and other trusts, protect consumers from unsafe products, guarantee the rights of women to vote and own property, provide safety nets to protect people from economic cycles and other misfortunes, eliminate legal discrimination against blacks and other minorities, provide opportunities for our poor, provide equal freedoms and opportunities for all people of whatever sexual orientation, and provide legal pathways for immigrants to obtain work in our United States. We support our American Dream. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans agree with our liberal values of freedom, opportunity, equality, responsibility and community.

We are not elitist. Just compare the composition of the delegates to the 2004 Democratic and Republican Conventions. We are inclusive, including all of the various groups cited above, whom the conservatives have attempted exclude from rights (freedoms and opportunities) enjoyed by the rest of us.

As liberals, we support the public interest (or common welfare) which consists in enhancing freedoms and opportunities for all, and especially people who have fewer freedoms and opportunities for the rest of us. The conservatives are the ones who support special interests by corruptly granting huge benefits to the powerful and wealthy. Unfortunately some liberal supporters do have special interests which they demand our liberal politicians cater to in return for their support.

Some examples are : Labor union protection of their health care benefits has been a major obstacle to securing universal health coverage. Automobile workers have joined their employers in resisting raising vehicle mileage standards. Teachers and other public employees have sometimes placed a high priority on job security at the expense of competence. Senior citizens have resisting taxation of social security benefits even for wealthy seniors.

Elected Democratic officials have participated with Republicans in voting themselves various privileges. Party officials have cooperated with Republicans to keep third party candidates from debates, from receiving funding and from obtaining places on the ballot. Party officials have also unduly influenced who can run, how they are funded, whom they hire as advisors and what their message should be.

Catering to these demands is not liberal and should be strongly resisted. Loyalty to our friends and supporters should not extend to allowing them to take advantage of others.

We support competence by people and by government. We believe that within their capabilities, people should be self-supporting and supportive of others. We want to provide help to people who are attempting to help themselves. We find it difficult to help people who irresponsibly refuse to do their share. With limited resources, we want to help others where our help will make a difference. In so far as our institutions reward those who help themselves, we don't want to help others who don't need our help. Nor to we want to waste our resources trying to help those who refuse to be helped. We recognize that it is often difficult to distinguish who belongs in which triage category.

We have always supported free private and public enterprise, only resisting the capitalist premise that the only bottom line is that top decisions should be made by and returns from production mostly accrue to the providers of capital. We believe that where necessary to stop external costs imposed by unfair, unsafe and polluting practices upon workers, consumers, suppliers and others, effective regulations should be imposed. We believe regulations are necessary to encourage unionization to level the bargaining field between employees and employers. We believe regulations are necessary to protect investors. We also believe that powerful businesses should be stopped from corrupting legislators through lobbying and campaign donations to obtain benefits at the expense of our public.

We believe that our present Bush administration and Republican-controlled congress is deceptive, incompetent and corrupt, beliefs now shared by 2/3rds of Americans. We strongly favor open transparency in government, competence by both our people and our government and honesty.

We believe in strongly defending our country against violence, including finding cures for diseases, protection from drunk drivers, reducing the availability of guns primarily used for crime, effective responses to natural disasters, and attacks by domestic and foreign terrorists. We believe that such treats should be countered legally through research and police action, with military force only rarely necessary and then conducted through international auspices. We believe that these threats should not be used as an excuse for extra-legal or legal extreme government secrecy, invasion of personal privacy, unnecessary military procurement of weapons suited only to conducting wars against non-existing technologically advanced militarily powerful enemies, or for partisan attacks on the loyalty of opposition politicians. We strongly believe in strengthening our police and other first responder resources.

Following George Lakoff's suggestions, we should not accept conservative framing of discussions, including their using such terms as moral majority (when conservatives represent neither), liberal media bias (which is demonstratively not true), socialized medicine, death tax (which is really a tax upon inherited unearned large wealth, much of which escapes taxation anyway through using original values without capital gains), reform (which often means lowering taxes and increasing benefits for the powerful and wealthy), and numerous other terms.

Instead, we should continually refer to our mainstream liberal values: inclusiveness, our general welfare, competence and compassion, cost-controlled Medicare for all, birth tax (which is the amount of per capita federal tax faced by every newborn) and similar terms which accurately portray our values.

We should aggressively promote our beliefs while disclosing the deceptive attacks and frequent hypocrisy of our opponents. Let them be whinny losers.

Silent Majority
This term, has been with us for some time, suggesting that most Americans are quiet conservatives. That was never true and is particularly untrue now. No one is noisier than conservatives, with their radio and television talk shows and other media outlets. Sometimes it seems that everywhere you look or listen, Rush Limbaugh and his like are whining about how liberals are victimizing them and expressing their hatred of these domineering liberal elites. The majority of Americans are liberal and are less outspoken than conservatives and certainly whine and hate less.

Liberal Elite
This term, suggest that liberals are a small bunch of people with foreign, effeminate, flakey, artsy, dissolute, rich values and tastes alien to the broad American middle class and that they look down on this middle class. There may be a few liberals like this somewhere, but the great majority of liberals are typically middle class. Many wealthy conservatives fit this definition as well or more than liberals. Much more than Conservatives, Liberals are mainstream.

Class Warfare
Conservatives cry 'Class Warfare' whenever liberals seek progressive taxation which requires the wealthy to pay their fare share. Americans don't believe much in the existence of economic classes, with almost all insisting they are middle class. Instead of arguing that it the conservatives who are conducting class warfare when they lower the taxes of the wealthy, liberals should simply argue for fair taxation.

We are not against earned wealth. We should point out that many of the wealthiest people didn't earn their wealth, they inherited it. Others such as high corporate officers appoint the people who will decide their undeservedly high compensation. Still others could not earn the money they do without the social institutions that previous generations have provided us. Fair taxation requires taxing this unearned wealth. Our wealthy shouldn't get a free lunch, frequently paying a lower rate than our less wealthy.

Liberal Media Bias
There is no liberal bias.. If anything there is a conservative bias. Our media is dominated by conservatives and media liberals have been frightened into passivity. David Brock presents abundant evidence in The Republican Noise Machine. Fortunately, the internet is providing a fairer distribution of news and ideas.

Sound Science
Bush administration ideologues have repeatedly repressed and distorted government reports written by scientists. They are the enemies of scientists, especially biologists and environmental scientists. Scientists overwhelming agree about most of their conclusions, such that there is little evidence of unsound science. What unsound science does occur is usually supported by polluting corporations.

Compassionate Conservativism
A total oxymoron. Conservatives have fought every movement to assist people who have fewer freedoms and opportunities than the rest of us. They continually attempt to assist people and businesses that have more freedoms and opportunities than the rest of us. Never has this been more true that since Bush became president with Republicans controlling both houses of congress.

Family Values
This term is regularly used by Religious Conservatives to refer to their sexually repressive measures. Most Americans don't share their obsession, being more concerned with obtaining more freedoms and opportunities to care for their families, by having adequate resources, insurance, or time (due to adults working long inflexible hours demanded by their employers)

Conservatives oppose adequate minimum wages, allowing people to qualify for the earned income tax credit, Medicare for all, bankruptcy legislation which allows people to escape illness produced bankruptcy, flexible time off from work to attend to family needs, and so much more.

Family values are part of the American Dream. We want to enhance freedoms and opportunities for families and assist families to competently use their freedoms and opportunities.

Culture of Life
Conservatives use this term to refer to their opposition to allowing stem cell research which may save lives, and allowing people (no matter their situation) to have abortions or end their life. Yet they support the death penalty, war, and torture. They believe they can prevent premarital sex by making the consequences as severe as possible; thus they oppose sexual education, contraception, vaccinations to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and other measures which may save lives. They also oppose Medicare for All, Head Start and other pre-school care, and many other life assisting programs. Once again, most Americans disagree with them.

No Child Left Behind
Bush used this term to refer to his educational bill which instead of giving more resources to schools in poor neighborhoods, takes them away. Conservatives support vouchers which enable some students to attend private schools, while those attending public schools would have fewer resources than at present.

To ensure that no child is left behind, we need federal funding for education that ensures that schools with culturally deprived children will get extra funding to hire top quality teachers with other necessary educational resources.

Marriage Penalty
Since our income tax laws allow married couples to file joint income tax returns, a small proportion of couples pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than if they were filing separately. As with the estate tax, conservatives argue for changes that lower taxes not just for these few couples, but for many wealthy couples who suffer no marriage penalty.

Death Tax
Conservatives refer to our estate tax as the Death Tax. They argue the value of the estate has already been taxed and shouldn't be taxed again. Much of the value of estates large enough to be taxed, is in untaxed capital gains, so without estate taxes, it wouldn't be taxed at all. Much of our income is taxed multiple times by an income tax, a FICA (Jobs tax used to support social security) tax, and sales taxes when we spend it.

Those fortunate to have built large estates almost certainly received many benefits from living in our United States with its rich institutional and capital heritage. It is just that they pay their debt to these by assisting their growth for future generations.

It's Your Money. You can spend your money better than the government can.
This is often not true. When production occurs, money is paid to the providers of capital and labor (often not in fair proportion), but not to the providers of our institutional and capital heritage. Unless this is paid through a Value Added Tax (VAT) or some other similar tax, the person has received money they didn't earn. Even for that part of the money one receives which should be theirs, they often can't spend it effectively by themselves.

For example, the residents of New Orleans couldn't each build levees around their yards, nor can we hire our own air comptrollers, forest rangers and many others. Many such things are often better managed and paid for by our government, although they may be contracted to private businesses.

Ownership Society
President Bush speaks of an Ownership Society in which all retirement, health care, and other public programs are privatized. He says, you can manage your money better than the government can. Unfortunately very few people have enough money to own very much or the skill to manage it. Private risk sharing entails enormous costs, since private insurers spend much more of their revenue than does the government for marketing, high officer salaries, and profits.

Personal (not Private) Accounts
Wanting to disguise their attempt to privatize social security, conservatives used personal instead of private accounts. Just the same thing under a different name. Most people given private accounts would fare less well than under the present system in which seniors are supported by the younger people they formerly cared for. People with private accounts would face many more risks and would pay much for management of their accounts.

Clear Skies, Clean Water, Healthy Forests
These labels on legislation are terribly misleading, since the legislation entails allowing more pollution and destruction of healthy forests than the alternatives they replaced.

Government
Reagan said, 'Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.' From the standpoint of those businesses which want to abuse their stockholders, workers, consumers and others, the government which protects them is a problem. But for the people who might otherwise be abused, government is the solution.

Also as noted above, many activities requiring cooperation of many people can be better managed by government than by private business. Often these activities are best performed by a government setting the standard, managing and paying a private contractor to actually perform the activity.

Government can become a problem when it becomes incompetent. Liberals support competent government and oppose incompetent government at least as much a conservatives, as shown by the fact that liberal governments are almost always managed more competently and with less corruption than conservative governments.

However, inefficiency in government does result from empire building by elected officials, something it is difficult for voters to track and vote against.

Department of Defense
Very few of our wars have been in defense of our country's territory and many not even in defense of our long-range interest. Truth in labeling would term it our Department of War.

War on Terrorism
We are fond of using a war analogy. Politicians have referred to the War on Poverty, on Crime, on Drugs, on Terrorism, and others. But these are not wars in the traditional sense of two armed forces confronting each other. The Iraq War is an appropriate label, but not the War on Terrorism.

Stopping terrorism is similar to stopping crime or trade illegal drug trade. It requires police activity to identify, find, apprehend, try, and incarcerate would-be and actual terrorists, often with much cooperation among different agencies, both domestic and foreign. Where terrorists are protected by governments, diplomacy and perhaps military force are needed.

Our Iraq War has harmed our struggle to stop terrorism. Like our support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine, our occupation of Iraq has stimulated Arabs and other Moslems to become terrorists. Once we withdraw from Iraq, and focus upon cooperating with other governments, we will become safer from terrorists.

Patriotism
We should never let conservatives suggest that they are more patriotic than liberals. It is liberals that have forever supported our American Dream and struggled to realize it for all of us, often against the opposition of the conservatives. This is most obvious now.

Most contemporary conservative leaders and pundits have not served in our military. They seek to exclude people from being able to achieve our American Dream. They are using exaggerated threats to reduce our freedoms and opportunities. We can all be amazed at how many measures of our present conservative administration mirror those used by the Soviet Union, including spying on our people, limiting our freedom to travel, attempting to manipulate and reduce the freedom of the press, trying to impose their ideologies on us, the corrupt granting of government contracts and resources and on and on.

We must aggressively fight to substitute our framing based upon honest representation of reality and our American Dream interest for the dishonest conservative representation of reality oriented to destroying our American Dream. We must never let their misrepresentations stand without strong argument. We must begin by reclaiming the label we have applied to ourselves for centuries.

Imagine how quickly this would happen if yard signs and bumper stickers proclaiming, 'Proud Liberal' appeared all over this land. It could happen faster than expected. The first job is to form liberal groups in every neighborhood, so liberals need not feel lonely, so the many aroused by our internet can be organized, so we can maximize our liberal vote to put liberals back in control of our government. We must also use every opportunity to counter conservative misrepresentation with honest truth.